It happens to everyone: an Edline notification appears in your inbox, and you freeze. You don’t even need to read it to know it’s bad news. That one history test that you didn’t prepare for? The lab you turned in a week late? The essay you forget to write? You’ve known for a couple days your grade was about to take a hit, but now it has been added online, right there for your parents to see.

In Whitman’s high-stress environment, grades seem to be all that matter. Students will do whatever it takes to get and keep the coveted 4.0 GPA. Edline magnifies that pressure by giving parents constant access to their kids’ grades. In order to reduce “helicopter parenting” and ease the pressure, MCPS should restrict parents’ access to grades on Edline, limiting the website to a students-only resource.

While there are times when parental oversight helps a student shape up and improve grades, it can also lead to unnecessary hovering, overreactions and added stress. Throughout the course of a quarter, a three out of five on a pop quiz holds very little weight on a transcript. However, if the score comes at the start of a quarter, the resulting grade can seem appalling to concerned parents and trigger unnecessary punishments. Such worries about relatively unimportant individual grades only increase stress levels.

Laurie Levy-Page, parent co-chair of the Whitman Stressbusters Committee—a parent group that aims to cultivate resilience and remove excessive stress—argues that Edline needs to be limited to ease the pressure put on students. The site should be used in consultation with students, so that students’ grades reflect their academic performance, she said.

Admittedly, parents shouldn’t be entirely left in the dark about their children’s school performance. MCPS could set up a system in which parents receive an alert whenever a student’s academic scores become perilously low. A 72 percent on a small quiz shouldn’t necessarily cause a freakout. However, if a student is consistently receiving C’s and D’s, parents can be notified and act accordingly.

“We suggest that parents only check Edline once a week,” resource counselor Frances Landau said. “It can be a useful tool for parents of students who aren’t always responsible, but generally we don’t want parents to check every day.”

If Edline becomes a students-only resource, kids can continue to use it for other beneficial aspects. “It’s extremely helpful for kids to check assignments and get notes from days they miss,” Landau said.

In recent years, Whitman has started an initiative to alleviate stress. In order to improve on its success, it’s time for both teachers and parents to put Edline grades in context. Once the student body stops living under constant fear of Edline updates, and the punishments that go along with it, students can finally start focusing on the other, less pressure-packed aspects of the high school experience.